


Still Waiting

by forever_doodling_tardises



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Immortal Merlin, Just A Bunch of Years in the Future I Guess, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Not Really AU - Sorry About That, POV First Person, POV Merlin, POV Outsider, Reincarnation, Set in Glastonbury, Still Not AU, University of Bristol, not really but
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 12:31:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2621843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forever_doodling_tardises/pseuds/forever_doodling_tardises
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you look in the window of Wizard Castle Dragon Cafe (yes, I know, what an odd name), at the east corner of University of Bristol campus, you will see a young man with black hair and sharp cheekbones sitting alone at one of the two-person window tables.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Outsider.

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note: YES, Wizard Castle Dragon Cafe is a thing (although not on the University of Bristol campus). I drove past it this morning. Promise. I know how odd it sounds. My theory is that three people own it, and they all got to pick one word of the title.
> 
> PS I'm not quite done watching the show yet, so please forgive any mistakes.
> 
> Edit: ok so it's actually Wizard Castle Dragon Tattoo. I feel so betrayed by my own mind. I've been so sure it was a cafe for so long rip me

If you look in the window of Wizard Castle Dragon Cafe (wonder about the name? So do I. Who would name a cafe something like that? At least they could make it a bit more congruent), at the east corner of University of Bristol campus, you will see a young man, who looks to be about student-aged, with black hair and sharp cheekbones sitting alone at one of the two-person window tables. Every day, without fail, he will be there. Sometimes he’ll be reading a paper. Sometimes he’ll be sipping a coffee. Sometimes he’ll just be sitting there gazing into the distance as if there’s something he can see that we can’t (maybe there is). Once or twice, I have seen him with his arms crossed on the table, head hidden in his elbows. In these situations, I’ve wondered, fleetingly, if he’s dead (my mind seems to jump easily to such dark conclusions) or asleep. Then his shoulders will shake a few times and he’ll sit back up, covering his face with his red neckerchief.

I have considered going inside WCDC to talk to him, but he doesn’t really give off an air of wanting to be talked to. Well, not by just anyone. He seems as though he’s waiting for someone. I’ve thought to him occasionally in my head: _If your mate, or your date, or whoever, has stood you up for eight months? It’s time to go home._ But he never does; he never gives up. He’s been there since I started uni, and I get the sense he’ll be there when I leave.

More than once, he’s pulled out a Sharpie and started writing on his arms, rolling up the sleeves of his blue polo-neck to cover his limbs in black ink. Always the same four letters, over and over again until very little pale skin remains: _A G M G._ I wonder if they’re the initials of whoever he’s waiting for. I think they must be - I can’t figure what else they might be.

One Wednesday, as I’m bicycling past the cafe on my way to History of Art at around 11:30 AM, I screech to a halt to do a double take. It’s murder on my tyres, but it’s not for nothing. The man is still there, of course he is. But now there’s another man sitting opposite him. They’re gazing at each other, both staring like the other is the most precious thing in the world. The black-haired man is grinning incredulously, watching the blond facing him speak. I laugh to myself a bit, looking on fondly as the black-haired man unties his neckerchief and ties it back around the blond’s neck. They both laugh (silently to me, separated as I am from them by a layer of glass) as I cycle away, nearly late to class. _Well,_ I think, _I guess he found who he was waiting for._

The next day, when I walk past on my way to the post-office, he isn’t there anymore. Neither is his blond companion. I smile slightly and continue on my way, letters loosely clutched in my hand. Unlikely as it seems, I guess some people do get happy endings. 

 

 


	2. Merlin

I have been living for so long, I’m not even sure what year it is anymore. The days blend together like stars in an endless night sky. I’m not sure how I continue to have money for coffee. Maybe I don’t, maybe the servers just take pity on me. I really don’t know.

In the early times, I ran. Withdrew into myself far away from civilisation. When I finally returned to Albion, now known as Somerset, something essential had broken inside me. I was still, against my own will, alive. But everything and everyone I’d known and loved were gone. I was untethered somehow from the universe I used to be so familiar with. Civilisation had sprung up around me without my realising. I did my best to adapt, but I didn’t really care much anymore. I’m waiting for someone who would never be again. So I walked into Glastonbury and, wandering into a shop, bought a black marker. Then I sat down inside the first place I had a good feeling about that offered food and a warm place to sit down - not quite Glastonbury, but still near it. A cafe, I heard the people around me say. I sat in the window, at a table meant for two. The taste in my mouth soured, urging me to move, but this table was the most compact I could find in the busy cafe, so I stayed out of courtesy to the others. And here is where we are now. Being seated in the huge front window, I read the backwards name of the place that I hadn’t taken the trouble to do more than glance at before coming in. I snort, the first thing close to a laugh that I have given in a while. _Wizard Castle Dragon Cafe_. Who names their cafe ‘Wizard Castle Dragon’? Absurd.

A short while later, the woman behind the counter announces that the cafe is closing up for the night. “That means you have to leave, dear,” she tells me gently when I don’t respond.

“Oh,” I say, starting, my voice disused. I hurry out of the cafe. Across the street is a glowing sign that reads SECOND HAND CLOTHING. The windows are still lit, so I duck inside. People have been staring at me all day in my worn clothing from forever ago, and besides, it’s getting colder. So I buy a puffy red jacket and a blue polo-neck (as I read on the label) shirt. I’m not letting go of anything else, though. When I try to give the cashier gold, he gives me an odd look. I remember the change I got from buying the marker, and hand him that instead. He sighs. “You’re ten pence short, but you look like you’ve been to Hell and back, so I’ll let it go.”

“Thank you,” I mumble, taking my new clothing and shuffling out of the shop. Now comes the ordeal of where to sleep. I don my new jacket and end up sleeping under a small bridge.

In the morning, I’m back at the cafe in my new shirt. I don’t know how I got here. This is how it goes for a long time. Years, maybe. Every so often, I pull out my marker. Struggling to remember, I scrawl four first initials into my skin. A G M G. I’m still waiting. Waiting, I think, for the impossible, but wait I will. For there is nothing else to do, nothing that I take joy in anymore.

At some point, I start scrawling on alley walls. Small print. Different every time.

 

**Arthur - i’m still waiting.**

**\--M**

**A G M G A G M G A G M G**

**magic might not be real anymore. i’m afraid.**

**magic is definitely still real. i’m more scared than before.**

**wizard. castle. dragon.**

**I’M STILL WAITING**

**Sorry.**

**WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP**

 

I’m not even sure it’s me writing these things anymore. I may be slightly out of my mind.

No matter how many things I write on walls and wish away with my mind (graffiti isn’t especially nice or, for that matter, particularly lawful, I’ve found), I always find myself back at the cafe. Every day, dawn to dusk. I’m not sure what draws me back - maybe it’s just a familiar place, maybe the title is so odd that I feel connected somehow with it. Wizard. Castle. Dragon. Three words that have become fiction.

One chilly day in what must be early winter, I’m drinking something bitter and black when the cheery little bell on the cafe door jingles. I turn around, as is my impulse, and I’m stuck staring. What I’m seeing is utterly impossible. I’ve really gone mad. But on the offest of chances that this might be real, I stand up and walk, not being able to make my feet move as quickly as I’d like, over to the man leaning against the wall just inside the doorway, hunched over and trying to get his hands warm. When I reach him, I just stand in front of him, waiting to be noticed, not knowing what to say. When he finally looks up, he freezes, staring at me.

Finally, I make my mouth work. “Remember me?” It comes out hoarser than I’d like. I guess I really haven’t used my voice for a long time.

All in a rush, he straightens up and wraps his arms around me. “Merlin!” His voice is loud. Some people turn around to look at us. I don’t care. I don’t care, and I hug him back, because for the first time in thousands of years, things might be slightly okay. Then I feel the tears sliding down my cheeks. I know, somehow, that we’re going to be alright, even in this odd new world, even alone, because we’re not. We’re together.

He pulls away. “How long were you waiting?”

I shrug. “I honestly don’t know.” And I find that I don’t. I have become timeless, drifting through the sea of a life self-prolonged against my will. Has he? He died, I know this to be true. But has he been somehow reborn? I discover that I don’t really care for the time being. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I cast my gaze to the ground. “Are your hands still cold?” He nods and grimaces. I reach out and hold his hands in mine. They really are freezing. “Come sit down, I’ve got a table,” I stutter. We walk over to the window I’ve been gazing deadly out of for years, and for the first time I recognise that I know the avenue landscape by heart. We’re in line for a few minutes to order two fresh coffees, then we sit back down. He asks me to catch him up on the world, but I laugh, explaining that I’ve been just as out of the loop as he has. He still looks like he’s absolutely frigid, so I untie my neckerchief and tie it around his neck instead. He brings it up so that the top edge rests against the bridge of his nose, smiling beneath the cloth. I smile back at him.

After an hour, we’ve finished our coffees and are just sitting, occasionally talking or laughing, but mostly just looking at each other, rememorising the faces we’ve begun to forget. My face starts melting into sadness again. “What’s wrong?” Arthur asks.

“I - you -” Now I’m crying in earnest. He comes round to my side of the table, letting me sob into his shoulder. “You’ve been gone,” I choke out, “for so long. I thought you’d never come b-back… I didn’t…” I gasp, breathing shallowly. “I didn’t want to live… for so long.” He wraps his arms tighter around me, and I feel more connected with life than I have since before Arthur’s death. We stumble out of the cafe, Arthur hastily throwing some coins on the table before helping me out the door. He untied my neckerchief from around his neck, using it to dry my tears before they froze in the biting air. “God, you’re so late,” I laugh vaguely hysterically. “Could have shown up in the 1600s, you clotpole.”

“Sorry,” he says earnestly, then adds under his breath: “idiot.”

We walk down the streets of the east end of the University of Bristol’s campus, and then out onto other roads until we reach Glastonbury. “This is where you came too?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “It’s not Albion anymore, is it?”

“No,” I said. “Glastonbury.”

“I knew that.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” We were silent as we walked towards a small housing block.

“How do you pay for this?” I ask.

“I’ve got a job at a pub down the road. Pays well enough.”

“Prince Arthur of Albion, working in a pub?’

“Shut up. Besides, if you want to talk about money, how did you survive off that one cafe for over a year?”

“I think they might have just given me free food. Maybe they thought I was mad. maybe they’re right,” I muse as we scale the stairs to the fourth landing. Inside are a few small, drafty rooms. “It’s certainly not much,” Arthur says self-consciously.

“Yes it is,” I contradict. “More than I’ve had for centuries. Besides, this place looks like a home.”

“It is,” Arthur says fondly. “It’s my home. Do you, um…” he gazes at the dusty floorboards, speaking more nervously. “It could...it could be our home. If you, erm, if you want.”

I step forward and embrace Arthur. “I’d love that,” I mumble into his shoulder. Then I pull back a bit. “Look, I don’t mean to make things awkward, and I know we’ve just reunited, but…” And I lean forward again and, with very much courage, kiss Arthur. Then Arthur is kissing back, and the notion that things are going to be very much more than slightly okay is here to stay. As unlikely as it seemed even yesterday, maybe people do have happy endings. 

 

 


End file.
